


doubling back

by decinq



Series: did we cause this wreckage by breathing [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Captain America: Civil War, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 14:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6474487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/pseuds/decinq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve feels Bucky following him before he sees him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	doubling back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [circulation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/circulation/gifts).



> this acts as a prequel to 'the slide into the habit of hesitation' but doesn't actually fit in with the sequel to that fic, which was written before aou came out, but it's whatever. death of the author etc. 
> 
> this is for alex, because basically everything is. i love you baby. 
> 
> (she also drew some art for this verse, which you can find [here](http://bittyjack.tumblr.com/post/142329821457/the-beautiful-commission-i-got-from-alexschlitz)!)

Someday, Steve thinks, he’ll run dry of excuses and finally leave.

Except someday keeps not coming, and the world keeps splintering in half.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve never thought he’d have a family outside of his ma and Bucky.

When Steve was fourteen, he nearly died from pneumonia. He doesn’t remember much, but he can hear his mother voice in his ear, can feel her fingers in his hair, nails on his scalp. Sometimes the ache of her absence is a weight that he carries with him for days, chipping away at the last bits of his resolve that have managed to stay in tact. He remembers her weight on the bed next to him, can remember the feeling of her breath on his cheek.

The only image he can conjure of the fevered memory, though, is Bucky leaning over him, nose pressed to Steve’s, eyes huge and desperate, saying, “Don’t leave me here alone.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being the strangest science experiment of one end of the century didn’t change his perspective all that much, which is why he thinks he was chosen for Rebirth in the first place. He loved almost everything about Peggy, but it couldn’t really change his lack of faith in his own survival. He didn’t jump out of planes and into gunfire in hopes dying, but not surviving is something that has been hanging over his head since he was a kid. And--well. If dying doing something worthwhile was how he was going to go, it sure as hell was better than seeing a light on the inside of his eyelids from a hospital bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thing is, when he crashes the Valkyrie into the Atlantic, there aren’t any lights.

The whole world goes black.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He tells Sam that he doesn’t think he could afford a place in Brooklyn, but he’s not sure if Sam understands the cost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve drives for hours, straight out of D.C. on the I-81 and stays on it for hours, more than half a day. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he has a duffle bag of cash and no point to prove. 

He pulls into Little Rock when he’s too hungry to keep driving. He gets a burger, finds a bed and breakfast. In the morning, the woman running the place points him towards a realtor’s office, and he walks in without an appointment.

He pays for the little farm house in cash. He buys a fireproof safe and stocks the cupboards with canned food. He leaves the photo album that the museum gave him in the safe alongside the rest of his cash, and drives back to D.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s hanging off the side of the bridge in Sokovia, and he knows it’s wrong, but he keeps expecting a metal hand to reach down and help him. Sam has spent more than enough time in this part of Europe, and Steve isn’t expecting anything when they first storm the Hydra base, but he can’t say that he wasn’t hoping.

All the leads turn cold, all the clues meaningless by the time the dust settles.

And, Christ, the Avengers don’t give a shit about Bucky. Steve can barely stomach the idea of watching anyone fall off the edge of the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve spends a week doing training with Natasha. After Ultron, Steve has to work to focus, to keep his breath steady. He knows that Sam is worried about him, but not enough to ask Steve about it.

It works for Steve--pretending like there’s nothing eating at his insides, nothing on his mind other than being better, being more prepared, being stronger, being faster.

And when he spends every night looking up at his ceiling, he finds himself thinking that there should be something else. It shouldn’t be just this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he’s in the city, he has to make an effort to remember that every glint of the sun off metal isn’t a flash into the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“God’s righteous man,” Ultron had said, and Steve learned all he needed to know: Ultron could be wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You okay?” Natasha asks him between bites of her sandwich.

“Sure,” Steve says. “You know.”

“Yeah,” she says, and Steve has to look away from her, can’t hold up under the scrutiny of her gaze. “You’re not alone,” she says.

Steve looks up from his lunch and gives her a small smile, even though he knows it feels sad. “So just like everyone else,” he says.

She smiles back and says, “Seems so.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam flips him and holds him down into the mat, and Steve’s breath leaves him. He gets it: everyone is up there at the very brink of their pain limit.

  ****

 

 

 

 

Winter falls on New York like it always has: the sky turns grey and the air gets thin. It snows upstate a day before it hits the city.

Steve feels Bucky following him before he sees him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you know that you keep looking over your shoulder, or have you developed a tick?”

“Must be a tick,” Steve says, scanning across the street before turning back to Clint. He takes a too big bite of his slice of pepperoni pizza but smiles while he chews, and Clint drops it.

 

 

 

 

Steve understands why Bucky is taking his time. He wouldn’t hold it against him even if he didn’t. But Steve has doubled back on their history enough times on his own to get it. There are so many places where their story falls through the cracks. There are so many things that the museums and the historians and the textbooks missed. Steve works with spies and even then he knows that you never really know someone.

He and Bucky were as close to that as anyone could get, though. He’s sure of it. He can feel the itch of Bucky under his skin. He can imagine all the different ways their lives could have gone.

And it’s hard to pick up the pieces when so many are missing. Steve can’t imagine how hard it is for Bucky, trying to figure out the full picture when his memories are gone. Steve’s memories are the most important thing he has.

He’s willing to wait. No matter how long it takes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thing that Steve’s learned is that there’s no glory in being a hero. There’s an illusion of it. But it’s a facade. The world is a horrible place, full of dark corners and unsafe spaces. Cruel fates. Steve can’t see the glamour in carrying around all that darkness inside his chest. His neck cracks, and his knees ache, and he’s tired down into his bones. He doesn’t know that good really ever wins in the end if evil keeps coming back, but he can’t say anything like that out loud.

He gets that there’s something to be said for being special, for fighting for the greater good.

It’s just that all carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders ever did for him was make it harder to walk.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve comes home to Bucky sitting at the kitchen table, fingers splayed across the finished wood, shoulders squared. He doesn’t smile when Steve stops at the front door. Steve moves to raise his hand in a motionless wave, and Bucky holds his finger to his lips.

He points towards the bookshelf. Steve knows that Maria’s team has had bugs planted there for a while. Steve breathes deep, and nods. He packs a bag silently, turns on the TV and leaves his cell phone on the coffee table, the news playing in the background.

He doesn’t bother to lock the door when they leave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve says, “Do you want to come with me?”

Bucky nods, a barely there movement, and Steve swallows. Bucky says, “Yes,” quiet and raspy and softer than anything.

Steve nods. “I know a place,” he says, and they go.


End file.
